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Home Security
How do you plan to secure and defend your home?
If you follow the adage of "deter, detect, delay, and defeat," how would you accomplish this?
Deter - House sits well back from the road on a hill, gravel drive, not much in the front yard, no obvious signs of wealth. Video surveillance camera by driveway entrance and video warning sign. Bright exterior floodlighting on just two switches covers most of the property, and all entrances/exits. Automatic dusk till dawn exterior lighting of entrances. Plan to add remote IR lighting for cameras and night vision. Selected interior lights left on at night and others are on timers. TV or radio on during day and most of the night. Thorny plants under windows. No ladders stored outside. Windows above basement level too tall to climb. All exterior doors locked but one, that one locked when I am not home. Chain and cable secure gate periodically. Garage is closed and doors locked automatically if we are not in it working. Front entrance requires a climb of more than 20 steps. Alarm monitoring signs by all entrances. Garage and main entrance are on back of house out of view from the street. Shrubbery kept trimmed below level of windows.
Detect - Driveway and blind spots covered by annunciators. Video surveillance wired into home TVs. Major views cover likely avenues of approach. Alarm system on all exterior doors and windows, set to chime when door or window opened. Gravel drive noisy to climb. Driveway passes by bedroom windows. Dog barks when outside noises heard.
Delay - Slow driving on gravel drive and two significant drainages create natural speed bumps, both easily covered from above from most of the front of the house, including Master BR. House is well off the road. Doors and windows locked. Windows are casement. Exterior doors are steel or fiberglass with 3" screws in hinges and bolt hardware. Frames are reinforced. Plan to add pockets for 2x6 door bars on steel doors. Deadbolt throws are boxed. Doors with glass have double cylinder deadbolts. Front door requires significant climb, enters into sunroom with locked and deadbolted interior doors into house. Main entrance is up several steps and could represent an excellent trap. Need portcullis though. Interior doors are 8-0 solid core and critical ones are secured with keyed locks. Frames are reinforced with double or triple studs. Multiple interior routes of defense, delay, and withdrawal or attack. Access to any bedroom requires breaching at least two or more locked doors. Valuables are secured in safes and secure areas. Garage doors lock automatically with deadbolts. No burglary tools left outside. Family briefed and drilled on emergency plan. Fire extinguishers and emergency flashlights in likely areas. Vehicles are locked, and no handheld remotes are left in cars.
Defend - Owner and family members well-armed and trained with a variety of weapons, including firearms. Good 360 degree fields of fire. Brick exterior. Need mouseholes, but the wife won't let me install them. Yet. Would like larger, more aggressive dog. Hardened interior structures for cover. I'll just leave it at that and save a few surprises.
Thoughts?
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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